


Front Door Open, Back Door Open

by Danii (ashurbadaktu)



Category: Wicked Years Series - Gregory Maguire
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-11 07:50:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashurbadaktu/pseuds/Danii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something post <i>Out of Oz</i> that I've been meaning to write since I finished the book.  Because they deserve it and I need some closure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Front Door Open, Back Door Open

**Author's Note:**

> Post _Out of Oz_.

It was a slapdash job of course, his little treatise, his written diatribe; the musings of a powerless man on the justice of power.  In truth, it was scattered, much like the man himself, but the words held something, rang with _something_ , and even though he’d have to put together another volume, glue together another eighty pages just to make it readable by someone outside of his own brain, he was pleased with his work.  He was not a man of words, but perhaps in his own time he could become a man of Words.

The scratching of goosequill on paper is why he didn’t hear it, his fraying focus steadied by the lampdark ink on the empty page.  Not the swish of a coat, nor the step of scuffed boots, the labored breathing of a man a few years older than he.  It’s the smell that comes to him, the musk and bare-earth dirt of it, the leathery soapy sweat of it that lifts his head in a movement so sharp that the intruder pauses.  When Liir turns, though, that’s when he’s _hit_.

Not as hard as he hits Trism, though.

He’s not angry.  He can’t be angry, not at Trism, never at Trism.  His fist connects with that perfect jaw, with the face made for smirking smiles and waggling eyebrows that have darkened to the color of old gold coins, and then he connects, tackling him to the ground. 

They’re young, the cobblestones digging into his back, fingers scrabbling as they try to kill one another, cling to one another.  They’re in the Emerald City, fighting like boys on the street out of desperation and terror and wonder and need.  They’re broken, both of them, both of them by dragons, but Liir’s at least healed. It’s perfect, a memory he’s held in the hard crystal beneath his ribs.

They crash to the wooden boards, both of them larger, heavier, the years on them in flesh and pain pushing the air out of both of their lungs.  This time, they don’t roll around.  This time, Liir is on top of him, staring down, and Trism is below him, battered and tired and _older_ , but never old, and the smell of him strikes again.

The crystal shatters, the shards digging in.

Words.  He’d written all his words down and now he doesn’t have any for this, for the man underneath him still as a corpse except for his eyes, for the broken pieces reflected there.

“I suppose I deserve that.”

Another damaged thing, the moment gone, lost into a sea of awkward perfection.  The words come out of him through the cracks, his but utterly out of his control.

“You let them kill me.”

The man beneath him said nothing to that.

“If you’re here for Rain—”

“I’m here for you,” is said quietly, the boy who cried wolf hoping desperately to be saved from what he’s truly afraid of.  Liir could have told him that he had nothing to fear, but he didn’t. 

It was awkward, falling, flopping really, until they’re both on the floor.  He doesn’t have to look at him that way, and the pieces don’t dig in with quite the same exquisite intensity.  The warmth of the other man seeps into him from one side like a sugarbalm, pulling away the pain at the cost of quite probable infection.  He muses quietly to himself that he wouldn’t mind losing that part to such a malady.  After all, his heart has done nothing but get him in trouble since day one, since the first throbbing ache of Elphaba’s demise.  A million questions go unasked.  Except—

“Your wife?”

A laugh.

“Your daughter?”

His head turns.  “I thought you said you weren’t here for Rain.”

Trism stares at the ceiling, which is far less accusatory. 

“I’m not.  I was just curious.”

Liir settles at that, choosing the same view for the same reasons.

“You should know I was never meant for happy endings.”

He thinks it’s a cough at first before the trembling of the shoulder pressed to his makes him realize it’s a laugh.  He’d be upset, except that it makes the muscle in his chest jump and the ball in his throat sink a little deeper.

“Who said this was your ending?”

“It’s certainly not a beginning.”

“It could be.”

“Could it?” Skepticism, he feels, is entirely reasonable. 

Trism’s clever lips curl into a moue that makes Liir think of his lips in ways he knows he shouldn’t.  Memory.  The past.  If there was anything he ever understood, even more than power, it was that.  And yet, if ever there was a thing he wanted to dismiss right now, it was that.

“Could it?” he repeats, insistent, shifting to look at Trism again even as the bone of his elbow screams at holding him up against the hard wood boards.  It’s comfortable in its discomfort.  Normal.  Silly.

Trism’s tired blue eyes, faintly bloodshot, finally turn to meet his again.

“Could it?” he says in reply.

Liir swallows and moves to stand, an unexpected hand offering a boost up from the ground.  Once he’s on his feet, he wraps his fingers in the fine wool coat of the other man and tugs.  Trism takes a little longer, and he observes with a faint twinge of irritation that the other man is still a smidge taller than him.

“We’ll need firewood,” he finally says.

“I’m handy with an axe,” Trism replies.

“And try to find some wild onions.  There’s a small patch just north of the stump.”

“I’ll look.”

Liir’s hand is tight on the sleeve, tight enough to make Trism meet his eyes again.  Right now, they are _painfully_ green, enough to make the other man swallow visibly.  He actually feels a little satisfaction from that.  At least he’s not alone.

“Leave your coat.”

Trism pauses, then, slowly as an instructor, pulls the coat from his shoulders and hangs it on the hook by the door.  The black cloak besides it is of better wool, but it has seen better days and the two look a fine pair in a strange sort of way.  Trism’s become a bit leaner since he saw him last.  Liir’s a little heavier.  He blames his time as an Elephant.

“I’ll work on the potatoes.”

Trism’s lips twitch and Liir needs a minute to identify it as a smile.  The shards dig in, but they’re almost too deep to cause any harm, absorbed into the greater whole.  He offers a watery smile in reply for encouragement before Trism walks to the door.

“Our first magic,” he says as Trism steps over the threshold.  It makes the other man pause.  He turns as if to ask, doesn’t speak as if he doesn’t deserve to, but Liir answers him anyway.

“Mercy.  On our souls.  For the both of us.”

The old light fills his eyes; not madness, not fervor, but something far simpler and much older.

“I’ll get the onions,” he says, and the translation is clear to Liir.  Not four words, but three. 

“I appreciate that,” and Trism hears it too.


End file.
